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December 02, 2007

I am back! It was really great to see my daughter, son-in-law and grandkids. We had a wonderful time and the days flew by. Joan (Jake's Mom) and I got to the airport and the kids were waiting with signs that said "Welcome Grandmas". They were so cute! It was such fun to be with them. I love the house rules on the refrigerator.

Isn't it great? It says so much so simply! We picked up the turkey and Jen spent the next day cooking and baking and getting ready for the next day.

And then it was THE day!

Jen is a super cook! Here she is...

And here is her turkey all done!

We had a wonderful time! The next day we all went out to get a tree. While we were looking I saw these little mini trees that were actually Rosemary plants! Mmmmm they smelled good! It was a great time! Thanks to Jen and Jake for being such a great hostess and host...Thanks to Joan for setting up the flights....Thanks to my grandkids for providing such joy....Thanks to Amy, David and Pam for watching my puppies so I could go!

November 18, 2007

It is the week of Thanksgiving already! How can that possibly be? Sometimes I wish I could slow time down or get a few do overs! That's not a comfortable feeling. I am happy to say I will be taking some time off of work to enjoy my family this week. I have missed them! There is so much to be grateful for this year.....difficult, unhappy, or disappointing moments make me recognize when I need to make time to slow down and think about the good things.

It is easy to feel like a teenager on the other end of life...I don't know where to go from here....or what I want to do when I grow up! But...I am reminding myself that life doesn't always have to go the way I plan it....I just need to bounce with it and remind myself that there is so much to be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving! If you are reading this...you are probably one of the things on my gratefulness list for right now!

November 24, 2006

This is a picture of my Great Grandmother, Anna Friese. It was taken about the same time that she turned ninety years old. I have great memories of her. She would sit at the piano and sing, "Darling I am growing old....silver threads among the gold....". Her voice cracked as she sang. As soon as she was done we would beg her to sing it again and she would laugh. We listened to her again and again. She loved children. I remember a time when my father took my brother and I to a carnival at a circus. He bought us each chameleons that had a tiny gold chains around their necks. On the end of the chain there was a pin so they could be fastened to our shirts. I remember we had just pinned them on our shoulders when my father heard his grandmother in the crowd. Part of this memory is how his face lit up when he heard her. He grabbed our hands as we rushed through the crowd looking for her. One of my hands was straight above my head and held tightly by my father and the other was protecting my new pet on my shoulder from the crowd. When we found Great Grandma, they laughed and hugged a lot. My memory is that my dad was so happy and surprised to have run into his eighty some year old grandmother at the carnival. When she noticed us standing there with our chameleons crawling around our shirts she laughed even more. She invited us over to her apartment and we let them move around to the drapes and the carpet while we drank ice cold lemonade with real lemons in it. After finishing our lemonade my brother and I moved our lizards from carpet to armchairs and watched them change colors as my Dad and my Great Grandmother laughed and talked in the background. The memory has a very hazy feel to it. I don't know if the apartment curtains were drawn to keep out the hot summer sun or if it was just the way I remember it. In my mind I can still picture the sun streaming through the curtains and the dust particles in the air bouncing around in the sunlight. I remember the smell of the old woolen carpet. It was not an unpleasant smell...just a distinctive one. Mostly I remember my excitement about having a pet! It was my first very own pet and my father had told us how we would have to feed them. He served in the Marine Corps in the Hawaiian Islands during World War II so he knew about chameleons. He said he had plenty of them crawling on his mosquito netting over his cot. Great Grandma nodded and told us she had seen a lot of them when she lived in Florida. She was pretty cool about them crawling around her apartment. Later, I remember feeling happy and content sitting in the back seat of the car as my father drove home. I studied the little tiny chameleon toes clinging to my own tiny finger. My mother was far from enthused about them when we walked in the door with them pinned to our shirts. My father got a lecture and we had to seal them into a glass jar with holes poked in the top. Somehow....(HMMMM....I know now where this one went)...just some crazy how....they escaped during the night. Nothing was left in the jar but we still had their tiny little gold chains. We cried. We got over it because a few days later my mom took us out to get pet turtles. Anyway...I think this is a great picture. And, I am thankful for memories like these.